PM’s ‘one-on-one’ with Trump unclear as summit ends

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

While the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go was in­formed that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar would en­gage in one-on-one dis­cus­sions with Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit, it now ap­pears that the in­ter­ac­tion was not a for­mal closed-door meet­ing but rather “an en­gage­ment” just be­fore the of­fi­cial pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty.

On Fri­day, on the eve of the sum­mit, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Nicholas Mor­ris told the Low­er House, “Mr Speak­er, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter will have one-on-one dis­cus­sions with the Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, as well as se­nior of­fi­cials in his ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jame­son Greer, and Sec­re­tary of En­er­gy Chris Wright.”

Im­ages post­ed on Sat­ur­day on the Prime Min­is­ter’s Face­book page showed bi­lat­er­al meet­ings with Sec­re­tary Chris Wright and Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamieson Greer.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so met Trinida­di­an-born rap­per and avid Trump sup­port­er Nic­ki Mi­naj. How­ev­er, apart from a video show­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump wel­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ahead of the of­fi­cial “fam­i­ly pho­to” with oth­er in­vit­ed lead­ers, no im­ages or video in­di­cat­ed that a pri­vate meet­ing took place with the US Pres­i­dent.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the Sum­mit on Sat­ur­day, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers was asked if the “one-on-one” meet­ing took place.

“That would have been a pri­vate meet­ing with the heads at the be­gin­ning of this morn­ing’s en­gage­ment.”

Asked if the two lead­ers were in a room alone, Min­is­ter Sobers said, “Well, when they would have met, there was an in­di­vid­ual meet­ing en­gage­ment, and then they moved on to have the pho­to ses­sion. Pres­i­dent Trump had in­di­vid­ual en­gage­ments with each leader, and then they went on to have the pho­to ses­sion.”

At­tempts to get clar­i­ty from Min­is­ter Mor­ris were fu­tile.

Guardian Me­dia wait­ed out­side the Trump Na­tion­al Do­ral Ho­tel, the venue for the sum­mit, in hopes of ques­tion­ing the Prime Min­is­ter about the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed “one-on-one” dis­cus­sions with Pres­i­dent Trump. How­ev­er, af­ter a sev­en-hour wait, the Prime Min­is­ter and her en­tourage drove past with­out stop­ping or ac­knowl­edg­ing the pres­ence of T&T me­dia rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

All ques­tions sent via What­sApp, her pre­ferred mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, al­so went unan­swered.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who was part of the del­e­ga­tion, did not re­spond to ques­tions sent to him about the Sum­mit.

On­ly Min­is­ter Sobers took time in be­tween meet­ings on Sat­ur­day to speak briefly with re­porters via a tele­phone.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that short­ly af­ter de­liv­er­ing his re­marks, Pres­i­dent Trump left the venue. This would have been around 1.30 pm.

Mean­while, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar left around 8 pm.

While the Sum­mit was ad­dressed by Pres­i­dent Trump and Sec­re­taries Hegseth and Ru­bio, no oth­er in­vit­ed head of state or gov­ern­ment was pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring re­marks on be­half of their coun­try.

There was al­so no joint press brief­ing fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC).

The coali­tion is de­signed to op­er­a­tionalise “hard pow­er” to dis­man­tle drug car­tels and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions across the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Ques­tions re­main about what the agree­ment will mean in prac­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly how T&T will treat sus­pect­ed drug run­ners, and whether it will ful­ly em­brace the US mil­i­tary’s con­tro­ver­sial “shoot-first” ap­proach, which hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions have crit­i­cised as amount­ing to ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.

The gov­ern­ment, through De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, re­cent­ly is­sued a for­mal state­ment call­ing on the me­dia and the Op­po­si­tion to tem­per their ques­tions re­gard­ing sen­si­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters.

He added that the gov­ern­ment is legal­ly em­pow­ered to refuse to an­swer them.